


O Negative

by delvindeep



Series: Lucida Clinic [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Blood, Gen, Needles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4642260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delvindeep/pseuds/delvindeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A figure from Blake's past rises from the dead, seeking blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Reading "The Start of a Habit" first is recommended but not necessary.

The woman slides her house key into the lock and turns it anticlockwise. The door is windowless, solid wood, and the old-fashioned mail slot has been nailed shut. Every curtain is closed.

She opens the door just enough to slide through the gap, closing it behind her as soon as she does.

She walks past the pile of letters that lie next to the door, kicked aside.

She walks past the light switch, even though it is midnight.

She walks past a cordless telephone which, if the battery weren’t dead, would be alerting her to the dozens of unheard voicemails stored in its memory, but not of the hundreds forgotten.

She walks past a bookshelf which is at capacity. Medical texts, historical diaries, literary classics, and on the bottom shelf, the one furthest from eye level, science fiction novels, all arranged in order of name, all thick with dust.

She walks past the skeleton of a cat, a collar still dangling from its vertebrae. The tag says “Stitches.”

She walks to the refrigerator and throws it open. Everything inside is raw and fresh. Her hand hovers over a slab of pink, glistening beef that could feed four, and…

_Salmonella e. coli listeria don’t don’t don’t don’t_

…grabs an apple. Her arms tremble under their own weight and the corpselike chill in her muscle tissue.

She lifts it to her teeth and gouges out a chunk too big to chew. Her incisors clamp together, cutting it in half. One lump falls to the floor, unheeded. Before even swallowing the first piece, she attacks the apple again, tearing into it as if it lives and writhes in her grasp, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth. Her throat spasms as a surge of juice trickles down, cold and flavourless. She bites down so hard that slivers of waxy skin embed themselves in her gums, drawing blood.

All wasteful, pointless ritual. She’s forgotten the sensation of hunger.

_But you want to feel something crunch_

In less than half a minute, there’s nothing but the core, and she bites through that too, cracks the bitter seeds between her molars, chews the stem into woody pulp.

The fridge beeps, warning that the door has been left open. She slams it shut. The contents rattle.

“I’m back,” she announces.

The other person doesn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

In the reception of the Lucida health clinic, a bearded faunus, who was younger than he looked, stood hunched and bundled in an anorak that had once matched the shade of his floppy, basset hound ears. He raised his fist to his mouth and barked out a single, protracted cough, a great wheeze that rose and rose in pitch before culminating in a sticky gurgle.

From behind her angular desk, Dr. Iris Lucida pointedly nudged a box of tissues.

“Egh,” croaked the faunus. “Been swallowin’ it all day. Why stop now?”

He inhaled as deeply as he could manage.

You could tell this was a human-run joint by who sat on which side of the big fancy table, obviously, don’t be stupid, but you could also tell because there were no measures in place to regulate the smell.

It was one of the few human negligences he didn’t begrudge them. Wasn’t their fault their senses didn’t work right. How could they grasp the bond between scent and emotion when they had never known their friends and family by nose, never carried a lost love in their clothing?

How was this one to know that, even when the last of the weary wounded had long since shuffled out the door, all clean and bandaged, their phantoms always lingered, stinking of blood and sickness and fear? And that here, in the centre of it all, she pierced the miasma with fumes of detergent and the soap that humans called “unscented”, and barely a whiff of honest sweat behind it?

She wasn’t. So she couldn’t be expected to understand the chill it put in his gut.

“Don’t suppose I can just get some cough syrup and go?” he asked, with a backwards glance and another chesty rumble.

“Cough syrup is a placebo, and you may quote me on that. You need antibiotics.”

“And you can’t get ‘em cause you’re not a real clinic.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Waste my whole damn afternoon.”

“Hearing voices as well, Mr. Bole? I thought it was just the cough.”

Mr. Bole wrinkled his forehead, taking a moment to register the implication. “What. You’re serious? Ain’t that prescription stuff?”

“I may need a few days. One moment, please.”

She swivelled her chair towards the sleek, black laptop sitting to her right (which, Mr. Bole had noted, was secured to the desk with a wire leash) and began to type. Mr. Bole leaned against the wood, watching her fingers move.

Eventually, he said “What’s your angle?”

“Ninety degrees,” she replied, not looking up.

“Wha?”

“A rather silly answer to a rather silly question, Mr. Bole.”

He sighed. “I’m sayin’, what do you get out of this? And I don’t just mean ‘cause you’re human. You could have these same exact ears and I’d ask the same exact thing. Why stick your neck out for someone you’re still callin’ mister?”

“When you pass another faunus sleeping on the street, what do you see? A man in the same boat? Someone who would understand?”

“Pff. A new pair of shoes, if they’re better ‘n mine. Long as it ain’t a cheetah or a gazelle or one of them fast ones.”

“But you do see it. And I do as well.”

And she made a near-imperceptible adjustment to her spectacles, perhaps for comfort, perhaps as nothing more than a gesture. And that seemed to be it.

“Um.”

Mr. Bole turned.

A girl, who must have been wearing very soft sneakers, lurked behind him. Her eyes flickered between him and the doctor, unsure of whom to address.

“I was wondering if I could volunteer, maybe?” she said, in a voice trying to excuse itself for the sheer rudeness of being audible.

Dr. Lucida glanced sideways. The girl wore a newsboy, with curly, storm-grey hair exploding from underneath.

“You want to work here?”

“Yes. Only, not for money. Volunteering. Um.”

Two loose sheets of A4 hovered in front of her face, bent along the width from where her thumbs gripped them. The paper covering her mouth and the brim of the cap dipping over her eyes gave the impression of talking to a timid nose.

“This is my CV. Sorry, I couldn’t find my stapler.”

“Fuck me,” muttered Mr. Bole. “You need a job reference that bad, petal?”

“Language, Mr. Bole.”

“ _Language?_ ” He snorted incredulously and spread his arms wide. “Well hot damn if I don’t feel ten years old again. You my fuckin’ momma now? You sure ain’t my auntie, ‘cause she cussed worse’n I do.”

“No, but I am the one getting your medicine.”

With no apparent pause in her keystrokes, Dr. Lucida accepted the CV with her left hand and started reading while her right hand continued ticking away, unmonitored.

Mr. Bole caught the girl’s gaze, and she immediately dropped his. “You see that?” he said, inclining his head towards the doctor. “Like a f…friggin’ robot. Creepy as hell.”

“Miss Cirrostra, is it?”

“Hmm?” said Miss Cirrostra, palms clapping her thighs as she stiffened to attention. “Oh, my name! Yes. Rayna Cirrostra. Um, I have my passport here as well. If you need to see it. Sorry, I should have said all this when I…”

And then she deflated again, eyes fixing on the floor. “Sorry. I’m really bad at interviews. Nice to meet you.”

“Not to worry,” said the doctor. “But I don’t see anything here about medical qualifications. You understand you’d mostly be cleaning and running errands?”

“Um, that’s the thing. Not that I mind doing that stuff, but I can help with the patients too. If you want. I haven’t studied or anything, but…”

She looked at Mr. Bole, or at least at the space a few inches beside his ear.

“Is it bronchitis?” she asked.

“What’s it to you, petal?”

And she laid her hands on his chest.

For a moment, nothing happened. Rayna’s face tightened a little, the freckles on her nose closing in on one another, and Mr. Bole regarded her quietly, paralysed by the sudden strangeness of it. Then he stepped back and batted her arms away, more out of surprise than aggression.

“The hell are you…”

The sentence caught in his throat. He put his hand to his chest, where Rayna’s had been. And then he coughed once, all air and no phlegm.

Dr. Lucida stared at him, fingers frozen on the keyboard.

 

* * *

 

“I thought you didn’t do needles?”

Nora Valkyrie did not answer. She had, in fact, not said a word all morning, an event matched in rarity only by the appearance of certain comets. She merely clenched her fists and pursed her lips, hard and grim.

From behind her, Ren sighed. “She heard there’d be cookies afterwards.”

Yang nodded. A pint of blood for something sweet. Fair trade at the Nora Bazaar. _Gonna be some real big headlines in the med journals once they poke a hole in her._ _‘Beacon student found to bleed syrup, immediately tries to drink herself.’_

The venue was a sports gym, deeply weathered, but still respected enough to command its own space amongst Vale’s tight-packed architecture. Blue-clad nurses scurried back and forth from vans parked outside into the glass double doors, carrying bags and tubes and folded chairs.

“I told you we were early,” said Weiss, with a sharp look that Ruby pretended not to see.

“Let’s just go in,” said Yang. “Worst they can do is tell us to come back later.”

Team RWBY followed one of the nurses inside, leaving Ren, Jaune and Pyrrha to the task of uprooting Nora.

The donor benches were already in place, clustered neatly along the lacquered wooden floor. Rows of chairs stood on either side of the entrance, just beyond the reception desk, with the busy staff funnelling through the middle. Before the girls could decide whether to sit, however, a bald, bespectacled lady in a white coat detached herself from the bustle and strode towards them, flourishing a clipboard.

“IDs, please,” she said.

They each produced their scrolls and slid open the holographic screens, tapping an icon to display their Beacon student identification. All except Blake, who stared agape at the bald woman.

She met her gaze coolly. “Your ID, please,” she repeated.

“Er, yes. Here,” stammered Blake, uncharacteristically fumbling in her pocket. “Excuse me, I know it’s not really my business, but are you…”

Her eyes narrowed to a squint. “Dr. Lucida? Dr. Iris Lucida?”

“I am.”

“God,” she breathed. “I thought you were dead.”

A smile tugged at her lips, but released them before it could cement itself. “I…we all heard about-“

“I’m sorry,” said the doctor. “We’re expecting quite a few donors today, so I really can’t chat. Seventeen, seventeen, seventeen…fifteen.”

All attention fell on Ruby, who, despite monumental effort, grinned sheepishly. “Heh,” she said.

“I’m afraid you have to be seventeen or over.”

“Well…”

Ruby pulled Yang’s sleeve and assailed her with a weapons-grade puppy dog pout, but her face had already settled into an unspoken “Told you.”

“It’s just, all my friends were coming, and this is, like, my _entire_ circle and I’d be the _one_ person who didn’t show up.” The words tumbled out almost too fast to understand, a rehearsed performance by a stage-frightened actress. “I mean, you could give my blood to someone, right? It wouldn’t hurt them, would it? It’s just for my safety. But that’s fine! I’m a huntress!”

Dr. Lucida raised an eyebrow.

“In training,” she added. “But I can take it. I know I can.”

“Most people your age try to sneak into nightclubs, not blood drives.”

“I’m not like most people my age,” replied Ruby, simply.

The doctor scanned the room, ensuring no-one else was within earshot, then handed Ruby her scroll back. “I’ll have to handle yours personally. Promise you’ll keep it quiet.”

“Yes!” said Ruby. “I mean. Yes.”

“Good.” She glanced at Blake before returning to her clipboard. “The faunus waiting area is on the left.”

“What, they can’t sit in the same seats as everyone else?”

Blake paled.

Yang had said it. Not a question, but an invitation. She took a half-step forward, shoulders rising, fingers curling, and the faintest puff of heat billowed from her skin. If the doctor noticed any of this, she showed no sign.

“Medical purposes. We can’t give human blood to faunus or vice versa, so it’s important that there aren’t any mix-ups.”

“Oh.” Yang paused. The tension lingered in her muscles, but her glare softened and, noting Blake’s mortified expression, she chuckled. “Duh, Yang. Shut up.”

“Your names will be called when we’re ready,” said the doctor. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

And off she went, her shiny dress shoes clacking.

The question came to each of them in turn. First Weiss, who had been ready to ask before the doctor even left. Then Ruby, who scratched her head in confusion. Finally, Yang turned to face Blake, realisation delayed by her earlier flash of anger.

“Wait a second,” she said. “How did she know…?”

“I…” Blake’s arms were folded across her abdomen, her gaze focused on the left-side seats. “I’ll tell you later. Guys, I’m having second thoughts about this. I’m sorry. I’m going to head back.”

They didn’t have to ask why. Sitting in a faunus-designated area, the bow that hid her heritage from the world might as well have been made of cling film. Even so…

“Blake,” said Weiss, careful not to let accusation poison her tone. “Is something the matter? Because you made a promise.”

“I know. I’ll tell you. I will. Just not right now. I’ll see you back at Beacon, okay?” She looked the three of them in the eyes, one by one, and they nodded, and nothing more was needed.

Ruby was first to be called; by Dr. Lucida herself, as promised. She was led past the cushioned benches to a set of portable dividers at the back, arranged to provide at least the illusion of privacy. The doctor bid her to sit, then checked her temperature, pulse and blood pressure, efficiency bordering on impatience.

“So,” said the doctor, making a final note. “Hopefully I needn’t ask if this is your first donation.”

“Well, I did just turn seventeen,” replied Ruby, with a nervous sort of cheekiness. “Uh, my dad goes all the time, though.”

“Is he also a huntsman?”

“He teaches over at Signal. You could say I’m following in his footsteps, but I dunno. I think I’d be doing this no matter what.”

She flexed her fingers. The pressure cuff still constricted her biceps, and her forearm already felt like an overinflated tire.

Dr. Lucida opened a drawer, removed a sealed butterfly needle and tore open the plastic, letting the thin tubing uncoil and dangle. “I’ll need a small sample first, just to check your haemoglobin levels. If you could clench your fist, please.”

Ruby groaned. “I have to get _two_ jabs?”

“I’m sure a little pinprick can’t be worse than a beowolf.”

“Yeah it can. Beowolves don’t make me bleed.”

She laid the hollow point against the inside of Ruby’s elbow, aligned with a vein. Then she seemed to catch sight of something opposite her, and her eyes darted upwards.

“Ah, there you are.”

Ruby turned her head to see…no-one. When she turned back, there was the needle. Her brow furrowed.

“What was that about?” she said.

“You had your aura up.”

Red surged into the tube, and the doctor affixed a syringe. “When we’re expecting harm, even if it isn’t life-threatening, we instinctively focus our aura to protect ourselves. For the average civilian, it wouldn’t matter much, but with you, I’d have lost a needle. Just a little distraction to drop your guard.”

“Huh. That’s clever.”

Ruby laid her head back.

The first needle she remembered getting, she’d wailed and pleaded all the way to the clinic. In the chair, she’d squirmed, insisting she would rather chance measles, but her mother had cupped her cheeks in her calloused hands, more comforting than soft ones in their familiarity, and assured her that it wouldn’t hurt if she didn’t watch. Ruby had leaned in towards those lavender eyes, seeing sincerity even through the blur of tears, and then the needle had gone in, and she had felt it, but it hadn’t seemed such a terrible thing anymore.

Soon afterwards, the cuts and bruises of an aspiring huntress began to accumulate, crying over every hurt became the privilege of younger girls, and needles were just one more of life’s little obligations. But even then, just as they touched her skin, just before that tiny spark of pain, she would look to her mother.

A few years later, she would look to Yang.

Now she looked to the ceiling, and the childhood custom had lost some of its power. The sting was mild but unrelenting, begging to be plucked out. But she still refused to watch, knowing that watching would make it worse, for the same reason she believed with all her heart that drinking milk would make her tall, that fresh homemade soup could cure the common cold, and that the world was not so broken that it couldn’t be mended.

“A huntress, then.”

“What?” Ruby blinked. “Oh. Yep.”

“Very prestigious profession, hunting,” said the doctor. “If you ask someone to name a hero, nine times out of ten they’ll tell you their favourite huntsman. And of course the pay’s nothing to sneeze at. All that fame and fortune can make a person forget how important the little charities are. Things that might seem trivial to someone like you can still make such a difference.”

Ruby risked a downwards glance. Dr. Lucida gripped her arm between thumb and forefinger, her head bowed over the slowly filling syringe. From this angle, with the light catching her glasses just so, Ruby couldn’t see her eyes; only the reflection of blood.

“You’re doing a great thing today. I hope you’ll remember that.”


	2. Chapter 2

To call Rayna Cirrostra a mixed blessing would have been unkind. She was, inarguably, 100% blessing. It was just an awful lot of blessing to fit in such a small space.

Mr. Bole was just one man who was probably thankful enough not to spill the beans; at least, not all in one serving; but no container, not even gratitude, was wordtight. Too many magic touches and soon all of Remnant would hear of Panacea working miracles through a humble twenty-something avatar, and the problem with miracles was that once you started handing them out, everybody wanted one.

There were almost a billion people in Vytal alone. At a push, Rayna could manage half a dozen a day before she had to lie down.

Dr. Lucida had asked if the healing effect could, perhaps, be slowed so it took place gradually over a few days, and Rayna had asked if a sneeze could, perhaps, be slowed so it took place gradually over a few minutes, then apologised for sounding snide.

“Alright, Ms. Marigold.” said Dr. Lucida, filling a hypodermic needle with saline. “This is a relatively new medicine, but I’m confident that it will work for you.”

“New, huh?” said Ms. Marigold, shifting warily in her seat.

Rayna struggled not to cringe. The patient, Ms. Marigold, had black marbles for eyes, and her second set of ears were tiny, petal-like things, almost invisible beneath her tawny hair; in other words, a guinea pig faunus, who was clearly _en garde_ against any wisecracks, awaiting the soonest opportunity to jump from her chair and yell ‘ _Oh great, thanks, haven’t heard that one a million times already._ ’

“Perfectly safe, I assure you,” said Dr. Lucida. “100% of patients so far have responded very well.”

“Is this gonna kill my baby-maker?”

A beat. Rayna covered her mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” said the doctor.

“This new stuff.” Her right leg bounced at the heel, fingernails plucked at her shirt buttons. Ms. Marigold was a fidgeter, and the perceived threat of infertility only intensified it. “You hear stories, you know. About what they put in shots. It’s not gonna, like, dry me up or anything, right? I’m getting married in a couple of months.”

“Oh, congratulations!”

Dr. Lucida closed her eyes.

Rayna’s voice, she’d discovered, was not the sort you heard unless you were listening for it…except when something pleased or excited her. Then her emotions just seemed to fill her lungs and surge out in a joyous, unbidden squeal, loud enough to quiet a crowd, and she’d shrink under the resulting stares.

Which she did.

“’anks,” mumbled Miss Marigold.

The doctor shook her head. “There are no known side effects, Miss Marigold.”

“I dunno. I dunno.” Her leg moved in a blur. “How new is ‘new’? I dunno.”

“Miss Marigold. As I said, your symptoms are consistent with IBS. It’s either this or a restricted diet and laxative suppositories for the rest of your life.”

Medical school taught many lessons. There was the cold, intricate science; anatomy, virology, the mechanisms of chemical compounds with oppressively complex names; but there were also the mundane, earthy sort of lessons, the first being that a patient would agree to absolutely anything if you mentioned suppositories as an alternative.

On cue, Ms. Marigold went still, then nodded, ashen.

After administering the injection, Dr. Lucida beckoned to Rayna, who delicately took Miss Marigold’s arm and pressed a wad of cotton into the needle wound.

“Wow.” Miss Marigold un-slouched, flexing her abdomen experimentally. “Hey. I swear I can feel that working already.”

Then another of those stories; _you know, the ones about what they put in shots_ ; surfaced like a swamp bubble in her mind, and her eyes became slits. “This isn’t addictive, right? I’m not gonna be selling back-alley handjobs for another hit, am I?”

“Unless the whim should strike you, no,” said Dr. Lucida. “One dose is enough for anyone. Now remember, plenty of fluids.”

“Plenty of fluids. Got it.”

“By fluids I mean water.”

“Right, right.”

“No alcohol until the wedding.”

“Aw, what?”

Dr. Lucida suppressed a grin. Miracles that demanded sacrifices were just transactions.

She led Miss Marigold, the last patient of the evening, to the exit and nodded her farewell. Halfway down the steps, Miss Marigold stopped prodding at her stomach and turned, fixing the doctor with an earnest look.

“Thank you,” she said.

Once she’d gone, Dr. Lucida nudged Rayna with an elbow. “That one was yours.”

“What do you mean?” said Rayna.

“When you’re on _nurse duty_ …” That was, Rayna had realised, their code phrase.“…and a patient says ‘thank you’, it’s for you. Even if they say it to me. I want to make sure you know that.”

“Oh.” Rayna smiled meekly and scratched her jawline. “Don’t worry about it, really. Doesn’t matter who’s thanking who as long as I’m helping.”

“It does matter,” said the doctor. “Thanks are our wages. Our reminder of the difference we’re making. Tea?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Dr. Lucida strode to the corner and flicked the electric kettle sitting on the countertop, next to a box of teabags. Chamomile. Same as always. She dropped one into her plain, white mug, then laid her palms across the wood.

“My business cards are making the rounds. Before long, this place will be packed full, open to close, every day. We may not be able to see everyone right away, even with your input.”

Rayna stepped forward, craning her neck as far as courtesy would allow. The doctor’s eyes were pointed at the wall, but not looking at it.

“We’re two people against the suffering of a species, Miss Cirrostra. Sooner or later, we won’t be enough. Sooner or later, we will let someone down. So save up those thanks. Remember each and every one. It’s a small comfort, but you’ll be needing it when the day comes.”

The kettle hissed, and hissed, and hissed, and stopped. Dr. Lucida filled her mug and set it on her desk so softly that it made no sound, her fingers staying curled around the handle.

“It doesn’t have to be just the two of us,” Rayna quavered.

The doctor looked up abruptly, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.

“There’ll be other volunteers, won’t there?” said Rayna. “Maybe no humans, but…”

_Good. Innocent, but not naïve._

“…but the faunus will want to help. Won’t they? I’m surprised there aren’t any here already.”

“Some have offered,” said the doctor. “I always decline.”

“What?” Confusion twisted her brow. “Why?”

Dr. Lucida eased herself into her chair, cupping her hands around the mug. “What do they have to make amends for?”

Hanging on the back wall, an old pendulum clock, straddling the line between classic and obsolete, ticked ten long seconds into the silence.

“That’s not right.”

“Excuse me?”

Rayna drew a chest-puffing breath, gripped the flaps of her trouser pockets and, with visible and near-pained exertion, pushed her line of sight into the doctor’s.

“This is supposed to be a faunus clinic, isn’t it? Don’t you think they’d feel more comfortable if they had some of their own people working here?”

“Perhaps, but I doubt we’ll be lucky enough to find another willing physician among them. They’ll still be placing themselves in human care.”

“That’s not the point. How do you think that makes them feel, when they want to contribute and you say no? Like you don’t trust them enough to do it?”

For a split second, the eye contact faltered, but Rayna set her jaw and blinked tightly, forcing it back.

“I mean…’making amends’? Is that what this is about? Are we here to treat sick faunus, or are we just here to show them not all humans are bad? Two people isn’t enough. You just said it, right there a minute ago. How can you turn down volunteers, knowing that? It’s their lives. Their problems. They shouldn’t need your permission to help fix them.”

The doctor sat motionless. Rayna, her willpower spent, lowered her head and began wringing her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said, nearly whispering. “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s your clinic, you run it how you think it needs to be run. But that’s how I feel.”

Dr. Lucida pinched a corner of the teabag that floated just above the water line, fishing it out and depositing it in the small waste bin at her feet. She raised the mug to her nose, inhaled the steam, and sipped.

“That will be all for today, Miss Cirrostra. As always, thank you for your assistance.”

 

* * *

 

Beneath a sky tinted orange by the receding sun, Ruby, Weiss and Yang walked the long, ostentatious path back to Beacon Academy, cutting a line through the lazy zig-zag of teenagers with nowhere in particular to be.

Or rather, Weiss and Yang walked. Ruby was slumped over her sister’s back, arms untidily draped across her shoulders.

“Feeling any better, rosebud?” said Yang.

“Bleeehhh,” said Ruby, and buried her face in Yang’s hair.

“Damn. That bad, huh?” She grinned sidelong at Weiss. “Normally I get hit when I call her that in front of other people.”

“She’ll get no sympathy from me,” said Weiss, though her constant glances suggested it wasn’t absent, merely withheld. “She was warned. Frankly, I’m surprised at that doctor. She shouldn’t have let herself be talked into it.”

“S’fine,” croaked Ruby. “If I can get into Beacon two years early, I can do anything two years early.”

“Not anything, kid,” said Yang, with a playful but chiding lilt. “I catch you with the wrong kind of bottle and Dad’s getting an email. In all caps.”

“Why did you want to go so badly?” asked Weiss. Her index finger shot up in anticipation. “And don’t say it’s just because everyone else was going. You’re the one who told us about it in the first place.”

Ruby didn’t answer, and Yang’s lush mane concealed her expression. Her only response was a slight shift of grip, her arms linking together to clutch her sister more tightly.

Just as Weiss opened her mouth again; _Did you hear me?_ ; Yang chimed in.

“Hospitals need as much blood as they can get.”

“Yes,” said Weiss, gaze lingering on Ruby for a moment. “Obviously. But they do build a surplus, you know. I can’t imagine there’s some terrible drought.”

“Your imagination isn’t that good, then. There’s only just enough to spare inside the kingdoms. Outside…y’know. Blood doesn’t keep long, even if you’re not using it, so you need it on the regular. And if you ever want to make a bigwig laugh, ask to set up a supply line in Grimm territory.”

Yang paused to readjust her hold on Ruby’s legs. When she resumed her pace, it was more gentle, more deliberate, perhaps not to jostle her passenger so much.

“Besides. Once people start bleeding out, even if you can keep them alive, all that pain and panic just draws more Grimm. I guess they figure anyone who goes out there either won’t get hurt or won’t come back. No sense wasting the resources.”

Weiss stared at her, alight with curiosity and a trace of deference. “I had no idea that was such an issue.”

“Dad told us.”

“Someone should see to it. There should be…” Her synapses flared, conjuring a dozen possible solutions, then burying them beneath a thousand definite complications. “…procedures. For hunters, especially! Considering the work they do, the least they’re owed is some decent medical care.”

“Yeah,” said Yang. “You’d think.”

Years at the Schnee dinner table had attuned Weiss to prickly silences. She could almost predict them by now. Full sentences dwindling to curt fragments. Everyone finding something to look at besides each other, so as not to invite further remark. Yang, for her part, had suddenly decided to avoid the cracks on the pavement, which of course meant focusing on the ground.

_Change the subject. Now. A few more seconds and it’ll be unsalvageable._

“Well,” she said, with halogen brightness. “I doubt they’ll need mine much, wherever they send it. I’m AB positive.”

Yang gave her a look. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“Who actually remembers their blood type? Who even knows it in the first place?”

 _Someone with a private doctor and a father who insisted on a full physical examination once a month_ , thought Weiss. She didn’t say it, because she was slowly learning the majority attitude towards rich people problems.

“It’s called the universal recipient,” she said, determined to educate. “AB positives can receive any other kind of blood, but they can only give it to other AB positives. O negative is the opposite. That’s the one they look for.”

“Trust you to have the best one,” said Yang.

Weiss coughed out an exasperated noise. “What do you mean ‘best one’? It’s only the best one if…”

_If you’re selfish._

On one hand, that would set herself for a spike. On the other, it wasn’t at all like Ruby to ignore a question. Avoid them, yes. Questions like “Have you finished that assignment yet?” or “Who keeps leaving towels on the floor?” produced a certain sputtering, neck-rubbing reaction that conveyed more truth than actual syllables, but here, she hadn’t even attempted an answer.

Which meant she wasn’t happy.

“If you’re an utterly self-absorbed egomaniac.” Throwing oneself on a sword was not to be done with half a heart.

“Exactly!” crowed Yang.

Ruby kept her peace even then, but a telltale dimple pitted her cheek, and Weiss basked in the quiet dignity of unsung martyrdom.

“Hmph,” she said.

“I bet it came out blue.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet that poor nurse stuck you and thought ‘Holy shit.’”

“Shut up.”

When they arrived back at their dorm room, Blake gave them her usual welcome, which is to say that she looked up from whatever book she was reading. Briefly.

“Looks like someone learned a lesson,” she said, taking note of Ruby.

“Ah, she’ll live,” said Yang. “Right, rosebud?”

Slowly, Ruby raised one arm high in the air, balled her fist, and let it fall on Yang’s head in the most anaemic hammerstrike ever thrown by a trained warrior.

“There she is.”

Yang knelt, allowing Ruby to half-slide, half-tumble onto one of the bunks; Weiss’, who graciously and wisely chose not to object; then closed her fingers over the spine of Blake’s book and pulled downwards, lowering the paper shield.

“Alright,” she said. “You and the doctor. Let’s hear it.”

 

* * *

 

The wand swirled, smearing the blood at its tip, spreading it watercolour thin into four neat circles.

The hand waited.

The second and fourth circles held their shape, smooth and glistening.

The first and third circles broke, splitting into an ugly, grainy agglutinate, a network of white capillaries showing through the red.

A positive. Record and shelve.

The hand took a fresh vial, painted another four circles, waited.

The first broke. The second broke. AB negative. Record and shelve.

Another vial. Another four circles. The second broke. B negative. Also thrombocytosis positive. Record and shelve. Send a letter.

Vial. Circles. Wait.

The circles held.

The hand waited.

The circles held.

O negative. Clean. Donor name: Ruby Rose.

Retain.


End file.
